Asa O’Neal, a UK senior mechanical engineering and physics major, was named to the 2024 Astronaut Scholars class by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
UK is the only university that has had a successful hypersonic reentry, a testament to the leading role the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering plays in in hypersonic research and space exploration.
Results from two separate research studies, led by UK graduate and postdoctoral scholars, will be presented during the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) semiannual meeting this week.
The Kentucky Re-Entry Probe Experiment (KREPE) successfully gathered heat shield data with capsules built by College of Engineering students and faculty, with funding from NASA and the NASA Kentucky Space Grant Consortium and EPSCoR Programs.
Gary Ferland, professor of physics and astronomy in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, shares insights about the new observatory, how UK will be involved and what it means for helping humankind learn about its place in the universe.
The project continues UK's commitment to producing the next generation of aerospace engineers at NASA, and UK College of Engineering's contributions to space exploration.
Ferland was honored for his work in developing and applying “Cloudy,” a special computer code that studies how light from distant celestial bodies is produced. “This award is a great honor, and is as much to UK as to me,” Ferland said.
"Our research is devoted to resolving the damage that might be caused by micrometeoroids or space dust. We are trying to determine whether we can use the old technology called ‘brazing’ to execute the process in real-time."
